Artfully
Concealed Prohibited Items – It’s
important to examine your bags prior to traveling to ensure no prohibited items
are inside. If a prohibited item is discovered in your bag or on your body, you
could be cited and quite possibly arrested by local law enforcement. Here are a
few examples from this week where prohibited items were found by our Officers
in strange places.

A 5-inch
knife and a sword concealed in a cane were discovered at Akron Canton (CAK).

A knife
was detected concealed in the strap on the carry-on bag at Cincinnati (CVG).

A
20-inch sword was detected concealed in a cane at Raleigh-Durham (RDU).

A
double-edged knife pendant attached to a necklace was discovered at Salt Lake
City (SLC).

Inert
Ordnance and Grenades etc.
- We continue to find inert hand grenades and other weaponry on a weekly basis.
Please keep in mind that if an item looks like a realistic bomb, grenade, mine,
etc., it is prohibited - real or not. When these items are found at a
checkpoint or in checked baggage, they can cause significant delays in
checkpoint screening. I know they are cool novelty items, but you cannot bring
them on a plane. Read here and here on why
inert items cause problems.

An
inert grenade mounted on a novelty plaque was discovered in checked baggage at
Atlanta (ATL).

Live
smoke and flare canisters were discovered in a checked bag at Phoenix (PHX).

A
live “sting ball” riot control grenade along with two inert M762A1 fuses and an
additional inert M782 fuse were discovered in an ammo can in checked baggage at
John Wayne (SNA).

An
inert grenade was discovered in a carry-on bag at Providence (PVD).

A
novelty grenade lighter was discovered in a carry-on bag at Albany (ALB).

Airsoft Guns – One Airsoft gun was discovered in carry-on baggage this
week at Roanoke (ROA). Airsoft guns are prohibited in carry-on bags, but
allowed in checked baggage. Read this post for more information: TSA
Travel Tips Tuesday: Traveling With Airsoft Guns

Airsoft Gun (ROA)

Firearms
Discovered This Week in Carry-On Bags

Guns Discovered at (L-R) DFW, PHX, BHM, BNA, CMH, MCO, MDW, HTS, JAX

Guns Discovered at (L-R) EVV, SEA, MDW, BOI, ROA

Guns Discovered at (L-R) HOU, CRP, TUL, GEG, JAX, PHX, MSY, BNA

*In
order to provide a timely weekly update, I compile my data from a preliminary
report. The year-end numbers will vary slightly (increase) from what I report
in the weekly updates. However, any monthly, midyear, or end-of-year numbers
TSA provides on this blog or elsewhere will not be estimates.

Unfortunately
these sorts of occurrences are all too frequent which is why we talk about
these finds. Sure, it’s great to share the things that our officers are
finding, but at the same time, each time we find a dangerous item, the
throughput is slowed down and a passenger that likely had no ill intent ends up
with a citation or in some cases is even arrested. The passenger can face a
penalty as high as $7,500.00. This is a friendly reminder to please
leave these items at home. Just because we find a prohibited item on an
individual does not mean they had bad intentions, that's for the law
enforcement officer to decide. In many cases, people simply forgot they had
these items.

It is hard to believe that these people who try to carry firearms onto an airplane , are doing this unintentional! They know it is illegal to do this!, they are trying to get away with it, and they are not innocent forgetful idiots! They should be be questioned throughly and and their firearms confiscated, and miss their flight at the least, with no refund!

Thanks to another anonymous poster, I am not the first here to point out that your weekly list again includes nothing that requires the expensive, invasive, slow and obviously ineffective full body scanner.

"You know they now have over 5 years of field usage, there is no nudity involved, and your argument is becoming old and tired. "

Actually, there's been no study and just because it displays the cartoon image doesn't mean it doesn't do nude imaging. The agruement might be old, but it's still valid. Your argument also doesn't address how slow and ineffective they are.

Anonymous <3, as a TSA employee, you know no studies have been run and you know the nudiescope scanners can and do produce and store nude pictures of passengers, including girls and boys in their early teens.

Pics of the low res versions of the scan are available on this blog and the ability to produce and store images was in the RFP sent to manufacturers.

TM Vice (Don Johnson?), you can find the lack of prison time and the absence of TSA fines in the local public records for the people who brought guns & knives into the screening area. Luckily for many, stupidity, forgetfulness, and irresponsibility are not capital crimes.

Umm...TSA agents aren't LEOs anymore than the people at mall security are not LEOs. This entire experiment has been a bizarre failure and whoever runs the communications side of this agency is terrible at it.

Does anyone know if these guns are destroyed, or only confiscated until the owner returns to claim them after their flight / trip? Just curious, but selling them might offer a partial revenue recovery for the TSA...

The naked body scanners have been decommisioned at this point and they are back to the backscatter ones. I agree that whatever kind of full body scanner they use, they may still not be 100% effective, but I still think they are on the right track.

My issue with the scanners is not the privacy issue because they have installed the cartoon image instead of the nude image. I'm not concerned about the health risks of the MMW machines. I wouldn't get in one of the backscatter machines due to the x-rays, but they seem to be phased out.

My issue with the scanners is that they are slow and ineffective. They are much slower than a metal detector. There are way too many false positives with them too. If you stand outside security at an airport, you will see many people getting patted down with nothing being found on their bodies. You can find many articles online about other countries not using the scanners because they have a high false positive rate or they don't detect items in tests. There are even videos online showing a guy carrying a metal box through the scanner, something that would have been caught by the metal detector.

Speaking of metal detectors, almost all of the items found weekly are found with the metal detectors and x-ray machines that have been used for decades. The scanners seem to be a colossal waste of money with little added security benefit.

If you anonymous types actually want to make a difference, you should probably check the concealed carry training for the states with the highest number of incidents. Send the results to your lawmakers to modify the training program. What I found interesting were the two at Midway since Illinois concealed carry hasn't even been implemented yet, and you won't be able to carry in airports even after implementation. Hopefully that will be in the Illinois training program.

My issue with the scanners is that they are slow and ineffective.I fail to understand this statement above. It only takes 5 to 7 seconds to perform the scan, this is from entering the machine to leaving the officer. How is this slow? I can’t even print out my boarding pass that fast. And ineffective, you’re wrong there too. I’ve watched people go through the machine and they have to be patted down in the areas that did not remove their STUFF from their pockets, because they don’t follow instructions. The officers inform you to “Remove EVERYTHING from your pockets, you belt, your shoes”, simple enough for me. If you follow the instructions, 5 to 7 seconds is nothing.

Indeed, they have a false positive rate of 100%. Note that Curtis never points to a single thing found with them most weeks, and when he does, it's always something that would have been found by a WTMD.

The scanners seem ineffective to me because of the false alarms. It's not just people leaving things in their pockets either. Although the scanner alarming for a tissue in the pocket makes me question its usefulness. There are plenty of reports of the scanners alarming on pleats in clothing or sweat. My wife had the scanner alarm on her hair. She didn't have any hair clips or pins in there and her hair wasn't particularly long or thick. The screener patted her hair down even though it too short to actually conceal anything.

The scanners are much slower than the metal detectors. Even if it is only 5-7 seconds to scan, that takes more time than the metal detector. Plus the prep time to get to the scanner is longer since everything has to be removed from the pockets. Multiply that extra time by thousands of people at a busy airport each day and that is significant.

For what the scanners cost in time and money, I just don't see that the added security benefit, if any, is worth it.

Hey TSAnonymous, why are ignoring the additional time taken while the naked pic MMW scanner generates the mysteriously arms down outline image, plus the time it takes for the screener to unnecessarily touch the passenger?

WWMD plus the hand wands are affordable, proven technology that if used properly by screeners who don't discriminate or use in a power-mad way will allow passengers a little more privacy while the TSA continues to waste taxpayer dollars on security theater.

Who's bringing plastic explosives to the airport in the first place? Is it worth traumatizing and abusing the rights of 99.99999999% of travelers to find an extremely rare would-be bomber at the security checkpoint? And if TSA happens to find the bomber at the checkpoint, what's to stop him/her from setting off the bomb at the checkpoint upon discovery?

We need a much smarter system!

By the way, body scanners are not reliable. Look up Jon Corbett's video, for example. Look up the international statistics on false positives.

Guys, calm down. No system is 100% effective. A system that is less than 100% effective is still effective. If you don't like the body scans, opt out or drive. This was forced on us not by the government but by terrorists. Be mad at them. And as to people bringing prohibited items on board, I'll bet 99% of those were accidental. I've seen passengers weeping as their liquids - just purchased - were thrown out because they didn't understand. It happens. If you have never made a mistake, forgotten something, or misunderstood - good for you. The rest of us are mere mortals. Expecting perfection out of the machines or people is unrealistic.